Part 48

See article by Mrs. Annie Nathan Meyer in _The Nation_, January 21, 1888. The petition to the Columbia Board for official sanction to open Barnard College was largely based on this article.

Footnote 9:

See article by Annie Nathan Meyer, in _University_, February 22, 1888.

Footnote 10:

As the Cincinnati Wesleyan College is an example of the best that Methodism has done for the separate education of women, so Albert Lea College in Minnesota, founded and controlled by the synod of that State, would appear to be the most ambitious attempt of the Presbyterian Church to aid the separate higher education of women in the West. This college was founded in 1882, and opened to students in 1885. Its president makes for it, with relation to the country west of the Alleghanies, the same claim that the president of the Wesleyan made in its behalf with relation to the entire country, forty-eight years ago. Its president, Dr. R. B. Abbott, writes: “This is the only real college for women west of the Alleghany Mountains. There are female seminaries in abundance, some of which are named college, but are without a full college curriculum and without authority to confer the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts. Albert Lea is a college in fact as well as in name.”

Albert Lea is now in only its fifth year. I have not been able to obtain its latest catalogue. The above quotation from its president’s letter indicates its promise. Should it redeem this promise in its spirit and word, it would be a great blessing to the West; not so much young because women in this part of the country need another college within their easy reach, but because the entire community needs to have the difference between the nominal and the real college continually emphasized.

If Albert Lea draws sharp and visible lines between its standards and tests of scholarship, between its quality and methods of instruction and those of the majority of institutions in the above list, its influence will be potent in securing greater harmony between names and things in matters pertaining to education.

Footnote 11:

Appendix B, Table II., gives a table by which is shown when each of these colleges was founded, when opened, and when opened to women.

Footnote 12:

Prepared by May Wright Sewall at the request of the commissioners for Indiana, for the Indiana Department of the New Orleans Exposition.—ED.

Footnote 13:

It is only fair to add that one of its graduates became a college president—Miss Alice Freeman, president of Wellesley College during six years, now Mrs. Alice F. Palmer, member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education.—ED.

Footnote 14:

Read before the Historical Society of South Carolina, August 6, 1883, and reprinted by the Bureau of Education, Circular of Information No. 3, 1888.

Footnote 15:

Mention is made of a charitable school for girls, which they were not allowed to attend after the age of twelve, and of a school, apparently for boys, kept open by Mrs. Gaston, the wife of Justice John Gaston, at Fishing Creek.

Footnote 16:

See chapter “Education in the East.”—ED.

Footnote 17:

See chapter “Education in the East.”—ED.

Footnote 18:

Quoted in the _Am. Jour. of Education_, September, 1868, p. 622.

Footnote 19:

Mrs. Phelps, Mrs. Willard, and Maria Mitchell were the first three women members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Footnote 20:

The first college to grant real degrees to women was Oberlin. See chapter “Education in the West.”—ED.

Footnote 21:

Bureau of Education, 1888.

Footnote 22:

Historical Sketch in the catalogue for 1888–9.

Footnote 23:

The Bureau of Education has been extremely kind in placing its collections at my disposal, and in making extracts for me from its manuscript statistics for 1889–90, which will not be published for two years to come.

Footnote 24:

An equivalent amount of French or German may be substituted for Greek.

Footnote 25:

Interesting on account of an extract from a letter from a Virginia girl.

Footnote 26:

Catalogue.

Footnote 27:

Vassar was not opened until 1865. See chapter on Education in East.—ED.

Footnote 28:

A Kentucky mother who had taken the trouble to send her daughter to Helmuth College in Canada, found that she was carrying on sixteen studies at the same time, and that she gave one half hour a week to geometry, during which the teacher gave the demonstrations and did not permit the class to ask any questions.

Footnote 29:

The tuition is $150 a year.

Footnote 30:

Report of the Peabody Education Fund, 1889.

Footnote 31:

Bureau of Education Report, 1887–88.

Footnote 32:

See the arguments interchanged in open letters,—learned essays, between Prof. Bischoff attacking, and Prof. Hermann defending, the admission of women to the University of Zurich. See also the address made last year by Prof. Waldeyer, before the Society of German Physicians and Naturalists.

Footnote 33:

“It is scarcely more than half a century, since among us, females were almost the only accoucheurs.”—“Remarks on the employment of Females as Practitioners in Midwifery,” by a Physician. Boston, 1820. See also collections Maine Historical Society; Proceedings General Court held at Wells, July 6, 1646, to “present” Frances Rayns for presuming to act the part of midwife. Also, Blake’s Annals of the town of Dorchester. Record of death, in 1705, of Mrs. Wiat, aged 94 years, having as midwife assisted at the births of 1100 and odd children. Also Thomson’s History of Vermont, sketching the career of Mrs. Thomas Whitmore in town of Marlboro, 1765. In the town records of Rehoboth is mentioned the arrival, on July 3, 1663, of Dr. Sam Fuller and his mother, he to practice medicine,—she as midwife, “to answer to the town’s necessity, which was great.” So also Mrs. Elizabeth Phillips settled in Charleston in 1718. Anne Hutchinson began her career as a midwife. It will be remembered that the mother of William Lloyd Garrison practiced midwifery in Baltimore, and thereby supported herself and two children, after she had been mysteriously deserted by her husband.

Footnote 34:

This sturdy woman lived to be eighty-seven years of age; an ironical comment on the theory of necessarily deficiency of endurance in the female sex.

Footnote 35:

“More than 150 years elapsed after the first settlement, before a single effort was made either by public authority or by the enterprise of individuals, for the education of physicians, or for improving the practice of medicine.... No medical journal was published in America, until toward the close of the 18th century.... The first anatomical dissection was made in New York, in 1750.—Thacher, _Am. Med. Biog._ 1828, p. 16.

Footnote 36:

“It would be shocking to humanity to relate the history of our general hospital in the years 1777 and 1778, when it swallowed up at least one half our army, ... by crowding and consequent infection.”... “At Bethlehem, out of 40 men who came sick from one regiment,—not three returned alive.”—Tilton on Military Hospitals (quoted by Tower, “Medical Men of the Revolution.” Address 1876, p. 77.)

Footnote 37:

“It was one of the first and happiest fruits of improved medical education in America, that females were excluded from practice; and this has only been effected by the united and persevering efforts of some of the most distinguished individuals of the profession.”—Remarks of a Boston physician, cited _ut supra_.

Footnote 38:

The suppression of midwives was more immediately due to the development of obstetrical science in England, whither the more ambitious among the colonial physicians were beginning to travel for instruction, and where their intellects were quickened by direct contact with the minds of men of genius. In 1752 Dr. James Lloyd, returning after two years’ study in England, began to practice obstetrics in Boston: In 1762, Dr. Shippen, similarly prepared, began to lecture on obstetrics in Philadelphia. (“Hist. of Art of Midwifery,” Lecture by Dr. Augustus Gardner, 1851). These actions sounded the professional death-knell of the poor midwives. Organized knowledge must invariably triumph over unorganized ignorance, even though tradition, decorum, and religion be all on the losing side.

Footnote 39:

“Man-midwifery Espoused and Corrected; or, The Employment of Men to attend Women in Childbirth, shown to be a modern innovation, unnecessary, unnatural, and injurious to the physical welfare of the Community, and pernicious in its influence on Professional and public Morality.” By Samuel Gregory, A.M., Lecturer on Physiology. Boston, 1848.

Footnote 40:

Is it possible not to seem to hear, from some quiet corner of dispassionate observation, the echo of the immortal “Fudge!” which so disturbed the complacency of the innocent Vicar of Wakefield?

Footnote 41:

“To Massachusetts is due the credit of establishing the first medical school for women in the world.”—Chadwick, “The Study and Practice of Medicine by Women,” _International Review_, October, 1879.

Footnote 42:

On two other occasions did these fortunes become associated with those of homœopaths. When in 1869 the State University of Michigan opened its medical department to women, the Legislature simultaneously ruled that two professors of homœopathic medicine must be appointed in the school. And when in 1886 the trustees of the Boston City Hospital inquired into the propriety of admitting female medical students, they reported at the same time upon the application of homœopathic physicians, to be appointed in the medical service of the wards. At this point, however, the fortunes of the two classes of applicants diverged: the first request was granted; the second refused.

The class of 1890 of the Boston University School only contains nine women.

Footnote 43:

Thus in France,—docteur en médecine, officier de santé, sage femme; in England,—physician, surgeon, apothecary. The midwife in England, was, until recently, assumed not to exist; but as she existed nevertheless, she became all the more dangerous because uncontrolled. “At present date, 60 per cent. of poor women are attended in their confinements by midwives, uninstructed and uncultivated,—probably 10,000 in number. The fatal results to both mothers and children arising from the ignorance of these midwives is notorious. They must either be annihilated or instructed.”—Dr. Aveling, writing to Gen. Med. Council, 1873.

The Obstetrical Society of London now undertakes to instruct and examine midwives.

Footnote 44:

Drs. Jacob Bigelow and James Jackson voted in the negative. The latter had been the physician to introduce into Boston the midwife, Mrs. Janet Alexander. So it would seem that his objection was not to women, but to _educated_ women, who might aspire to rank among regularly educated men physicians.

Footnote 45:

The details of Miss Hunt’s application to Harvard are dispassionately related by Dr. Chadwick, _loc. cit._ When, in 1872, the London University, after a two years’ bitter controversy, declared women eligible to its degrees, the journals were flooded with letters from indignant physicians, who declared that by this action their own diplomas, previously obtained, had been lowered in value, their contracts violated, and their most sacred property rights invaded.

Footnote 46:

Address at Chickering Hall, New York, March 18, 1888, by Dr. Emily Blackwell.

Footnote 47:

Mt. Holyoke was founded by Mary Lyon in 1837.

Footnote 48:

Address of Emily Blackwell, _cit. ut supra._

Footnote 49:

Elizabeth Blackwell, like Tennyson’s Princess,

“Shuddered but to dream that maids should ape Those monstrous males that carve the living hound.”

And also like the Princess, it was

“through many a weary moon She learned the craft of healing.”

Footnote 50:

“Medicine as a Profession for Women.” Address by Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, delivered Dec. 2, 1859.

Footnote 51:

Miss Blackwell was of English birth and family, but had come to Cincinnati at the age of twelve.

Footnote 52:

Dr. Robert Weir.

Footnote 53:

Miss Blackwell earned money by several years’ work at school teaching, the great resource of American girls.

Footnote 54:

“It was the first time that a unanimous vote was ever cast in the board.”—_Personal letter from Dr. Blackwell._

Footnote 55:

Especially St. Bartholomew, through the influence of Dr., afterwards Sir James, Paget.

Footnote 56:

The “ancient and modern languages,” comprised Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian,—an unusual list of accomplishments for a self-taught, Western bred girl of those days. Miss Blackwell particularly charmed Dr. Simpson by translating for him into English (or Scotch) some Latin versions of old Arabic medical treatises.

Footnote 57:

For modern obstetrics is almost as new a sphere as gynæcology.

Footnote 58:

“Story of My Life,” by Marion Sims, p. 299.

It must be said that Dr. Sims was subsequently president of the American Medical Association, at the meeting which received its first woman delegate; and doubtless his influence contributed toward her favorable reception.

Footnote 59:

It will be remembered what were the conditions of graduation in New York in 1855.

Footnote 60:

“This was the thirtieth operation performed on Anarcha.” (1849.—Sims, _loc. cit._ p. 246.) 1849, foundation date of American gynæcology, was the date of the year when Elizabeth Blackwell received her diploma.

Footnote 61:

Dr. Sims, in his autobiography, complains that he was denounced as a quack by the “conservative” surgeons of New York, some of whom did not hesitate to secretly try to dissuade the ladies from doing anything about the Woman’s Hospital, and urging that the New York Hospital already accomplished every purpose.

Thus whatever _is_, invariably seeks to strangle in the birth that which is about to be!

Footnote 62:

Dr. Zakzrewska’s life has been sketched in outline down to the above date, in a little volume entitled “Practical Illustration of Woman’s Right to Labor,” by Caroline Dall.

Footnote 63:

A petition for the emancipation of negro slaves was presented to Congress by a group of Quaker gentlemen, within a few years after the framing of the Constitution.—Van Holst, _Constitutional History of America_.

Footnote 64:

Hannah Richardson and Rebecca White.

Footnote 65:

See _ut supra_, p. 13, note.

Footnote 66:

_Galaxy_, 1868. The innocent young Quaker girl did not find this “a disgusting preliminary!”

Footnote 67:

Personal letter.

Footnote 68:

To them were born two children, a son who died in early childhood; a daughter who lived to grow up and became educated as a physician.

Footnote 69:

Out of 189 graduates of the Philadelphia College whose status was reported in 1881, 56 were married women. The total number of graduates at that time was 276. (Rachel Bodley, “The College Story,” Commencement address, 1881.)

Footnote 70:

There were eight graduates. The first medical class that ever graduated in Philadelphia about a century before consisted of a single number.

Footnote 71:

Quite a group of bystanders collected to hear the discussion, which was animated by opposing cheers and hisses.

Footnote 72:

“To be addressed in public as doctor,” writes Dr. Zakzrewrka, “was painful, for all heads would turn to look at the woman thus stigmatized.” (Personal letter.) “Women,” said Dr. Blackwell at this time, “occupy an anomalous position, standing alone in medicine,—often opposed or ignored by the profession, not acknowledged by society, and separated from the usual pursuits and interests of women.”—(“An Appeal in behalf of the Medical Education of Women.” New York: 1856).

Footnote 73:

Personal letter of niece.—_R. L. Fussell._

Footnote 74:

Annual Catalogue, 1854.

Footnote 75:

“Every woman will be narrowly watched and severely criticised because she is a woman. If she bear not herself wisely and well, many will suffer for her sake. Gentleness of manner, the adornment of a quiet spirit, are as important to the physician as the woman.... I too have felt the hopes and the aspirations after a fuller and more satisfying life, which have arisen in the souls of some of you.... The office of healing is Christlike.... Your business is, not to war with words, but to make good your position by deeds of healing.... Probity, simplicity, modesty, hope, patience, benevolence, prudence,—are needed alike by the woman and the physician. All the brave, struggling women, who, in various walks of life, are laboring for small compensations, will be benefited by a movement which opens to women another department of remunerative and honorable activity.”

Contrast with these modest statements of the gentle Philadelphia Quakeress the aggressive self-consciousness of the emancipated French woman, who rushes into the arena, with a little red flag waving in every sentence: “À nos lectrices, à nos lecteurs, à nos collaborateurs, à nos amis connus et inconnus, à tous ceux qui s’interessent à notre entreprise. Salut!... Nous voyons tous les jours des professeurs qui ont étudié dans leurs moindres détails, tous les êtres organises qui forment la série zoologique, et qui semblent ignorer absolument ce qu’est cet être qui tient tant de place dans l’humanité, la femme. Faisons-nous connaître, et quand ils sauront ce que nous valons, ils nous apprecieront comme nous le meritons.”—Mme. C. Renooz, _Revue Scientifique des femmes_. Paris, Mai, 1888.

The _Revue_ is already extinguished after a year’s existence. The college survives and prospers after forty years of struggle.

Footnote 76:

The celebrated Dr. Camman, who for many years held a clinic for heart and lung diseases at the Demilt, gave valuable instruction to the women students.

Footnote 77:

This innovation (for it was one) was effected during the residentship of Dr. Elizabeth Cushier, who has contributed immensely to the building up of the hospital.

Footnote 78:

This is an increase of 100 patients over the preceding year.

Footnote 79:

In the chapter on “Women in Hospitals,” in this volume, Mrs. Ednah Cheney gives the details of the early formation of the New England Hospital.—ED.

Footnote 80:

“She was as fresh and girlish as if such qualities had never been pronounced incompatible with medical attainments. She had, indeed, a certain flower-like beauty, a peculiar softness and elegance of appearance and manner. I have wondered whether she did not resemble Angelica Kaufman. Underneath this softness, however, lay a decision of purpose, a Puritan austerity of character that made itself felt, though unseen. “She ruled the hospital like a little Napoleon,” said a lady who had been there.... Both the surgical talents and surgical training of Dr. Dimock are certainly at the present date (1875), exceptional among women. It is on this account that our loss is irreparable, for at this moment there seems to be no one to take her place. Many battles have been lost from such a cause. But although ours be ultimately won, we would not, if we could, grieve less loyally for this girl, so brilliant and so gentle, so single of purpose and so wide of aim, whose life had been thus ruthlessly uprooted and thrown upon the waves at the very moment it touched upon fruition.”—M. P. Jacobi in _New York Medical Record_, 1875.

Dr. Dimock, like so many of the early gynæcological surgeons of America, was a Southerner, born in North Carolina.

Footnote 81:

Nineteenth Annual Report Chicago Hospital for Women and Children, 1884.

Footnote 82:

Report, _loc. cit._

Footnote 83:

“To the fixedness and honesty of purpose of Dr. Mary H. Thompson, may be credited these satisfactory results of nineteen years’ work. They mean a devotion and self-sacrifice on her part that few can estimate.”—_Report of results from 1884 to 1888_.

Footnote 84:

_Medical News_, 1885. Reprint of address at Birmingham by Lawson Tait.

Footnote 85:

The establishment of such schools, professing to further the education of women, has continued to be the greatest bane to the movement for their effective education. So late as the current year (1890), a lady writes from Cincinnati: “The college already in existence is one of the unpardonable sins against a confiding public.”

Footnote 86:

Memorial of Trustees of Women’s Medical College of N. Y. Infirmary, 1887.

Footnote 87:

The same thing had happened at Harvard, when it raised its standard of requirements.

Footnote 88:

Memorial Trustees, _loc. cit._

Footnote 89:

_Ibid._

Footnote 90:

See history of the founding of the University of Michigan, chapter Education in the Western States.—ED.

Footnote 91:

Letter from Chicago in _Boston Med. and Surg. Journal_, July, 1878.

Footnote 92:

“History of Competitive Examinations for the Woman’s Medical College of Chicago.” Read before its Alumnæ Association, April 1, 1889, by Dr. Marie Mergler.

Footnote 93:

These early experiences were, as has already been hinted, common to all the schools ever established independently for women. Until very recently, the gentlemen who have professed to teach surgery have never persuaded themselves to take their subject seriously.

Footnote 94:

Dr. Sutro Merritt, daughter of the famous engineer, and who married a fellow student from the University of California; and the twin sisters, Agnes and Isabel Lowry.

Footnote 95:

“The education of the college is a conquered standpoint: what remains is to make the post-collegiate education equally easy of access to women. To duplicate the great laboratories and the great professorships of the two or three colleges which give adequate post-graduate instruction, would be foolish in the extreme. It is little less than silly to suppose that seriously minded men and women could not brave the associations of the lecture room without danger of impropriety. What possible reason can Columbia College, or Clark University, or the Johns Hopkins urge for not throwing open their post-graduate courses to women? What more graceful act could be imagined with which to mark this memorable year, when Vassar College celebrates her first quarter of a century and when Phillipa Fawcett is four hundred marks ahead of the senior wrangler, than for these universities, without further wheedling or coaxing or bribing, to open to women the opportunities for hard work which women covet, and which the sense of justice of men, tardy though it be, will not permit them much longer to refuse.”—Editorial in _New York Evening Post_, June 17, 1890.

Footnote 96:

_New York Medical Record_, June 24, 1885.

Footnote 97:

Of which sixteen admit women. There are altogether thirty-five co-educational medical schools. See _Record_, _loc. cit._

Footnote 98:

_Ut supra_, p. 106.

Footnote 99:

_Phil. Med. and Surg. Reporter_, 1867, vol. 16.

Footnote 100:

The distinguished ovariotomist, one of the earliest in the country.

Footnote 101:

Quite a number of the members of the Society defied the authority of its resolution, and “consulted” with women or even taught them. Among the latter, Dr. Hartshorne, who became an able professor of the Woman’s College, was the only one who took the trouble to withdraw from the County Medical Society on account of his relations with the woman’s school.

Footnote 102:

_Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, May 25, 1871.

Footnote 103: